ABSTRACT
Cho Seung-Hui Ÿrst presented in an emergency room after he was taken into custody by the Virginia Tech police, who responded to a stalking complaint and then Cho’s statement to his roommate that he might as well commit suicide. us, as Cho drifted further into a violent mental state, the emergency room was the Ÿrst place where he could have been evaluated, set up for diagnosis, and released into the custody of his family. But the emergency room failed. is is a serious matter because, as healthcare funding in America had precipitously declined over the past forty years, emergency rooms, as underfunded and understa¡ed as they are, have become ground zero for not just healthcare emergencies but for public safety emergencies as well.
